Monday, 29 December 2014

Sorry Seems the Hardest Thing to Say

One is exemplified by ‘The dog was a sorry sight when she
got home after an unsuccessful afternoon’s rabbit-hunting in the rain.’ Here,
‘sorry’ is an adjective, characterizing the dog’s appearance: bedraggled,
abject, disappointed, soggy.

Sense two is the common one: ‘I’m sorry I trod on your
laptop/cat/baby.’ ‘Sorry’ is here something like what linguistic philosophers
have called a ‘Performative Utterance’; to say
‘sorry’ in this sense is to be sorry.
One remembers from childhood being told ‘Say “Sorry”!’ and how one felt about
it. It is admitting blame and declaring remorse.

Then there is sense three: ‘Sometimes I almost felt sorry
for that prat Dennis: imagine being married to Maggie.’ To feel sorry for
someone is to feel pity or sympathy.

Now consider the following only lightly fictionalized
openings to letters from companies:

‘We are sorry that you are not pleased with your
Russell-Hobbs Espresso Machine…’ (This flimsy piece of plastic has less
pressure than a nun’s fart and consequently makes acridly undrinkable coffee;
it’s incapable of frothing any kind of milk, and it falls over as soon as one
touches any of its controls.)

‘We are sorry you disliked the typography of our edition of
Emily Dickinson’s poems…’ (It looked as if the printer had used blotting paper
and a leaky ink-jet cartridge).

Many people getting either of those two letters would think
‘Well, at least they said ‘Sorry’. But read more carefully: of course they hope
you will take these ‘Sorry’s in sense two, but in fact they’re using sense
three, though minus the sympathy and plus some contempt. Just try getting them
to admit liability and offer redress and you will see what I mean. It’s become
a common trick, and they get away with it because they know most people won’t
or can’t analyse what has been said, and anyway think ‘correct usage’ is an
outmoded concept; that linguistic precision doesn’t really matter.